2 Esdras 3:9-25

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

⁹ But again, in its time you brought the flood upon the inhabitants of the world and destroyed them.^{(A) 10} And the same fate befell all of them: just as death came upon Adam, so the flood upon them. ¹¹ But you left one of them, Noah with his household, and all the righteous who have descended from him.^(B)

¹² “When those who lived on earth began to multiply, they produced children and peoples and many nations, and again they began to be more ungodly than were their ancestors. ¹³ And when they were committing iniquity in your sight, you chose for yourself one of them, whose name was Abraham;^{(C) 14} you loved him, and to him alone you revealed the end of the times, secretly by night.^{(D) 15} You made an everlasting covenant with him and promised him that you would never forsake his descendants, and you gave him Isaac, and to Isaac you gave Jacob and Esau.^{(E) 16} You set apart Jacob for yourself, but Esau you rejected, and Jacob became a great multitude.^{(F) 17} And when you led his descendants out of Egypt, you brought them to Mount Sinai.^{(G) 18} You bent down the heavens and shook^[a] the earth and moved the world and caused the depths to tremble and troubled the times.^{(H) 19} Your glory passed through the four gates of fire and earthquake and wind and ice, to give the law to the descendants of Jacob and your commandment to the posterity of Israel.^(I)

²⁰ “Yet you did not take away their evil heart from them, so that your law might produce fruit in them.^{(J) 21} For the first Adam, burdened with an evil heart, transgressed and was overcome, as were also all who were descended from him.^{(K) 22} Thus the disease became permanent; the law was in the hearts of the people along with the evil root, but what was good departed, and the evil remained.^{(L) 23} So the times passed and the years were completed, and you raised up for yourself a servant named David.^{(M) 24} You commanded him to build a city for your name and there to offer you oblations from what is yours.^{(N) 25} This was done for many years, but the inhabitants of the city transgressed,